For Educators
This page is written to be forwarded. If you're the teacher, send it to your department head. If you're the budget holder, everything you need is below — outcomes, alignment, assessment, timing, and cost logic.
What Awesomeville is
A card-based entrepreneurship game for ages 12+. Teams of 3–5 receive a fictional town with unusual characteristics, real community challenges to solve, and a business requirement to build within — then design, adapt, and pitch a venture in a single class period. No devices, no accounts, no prep beyond a four-page rulebook.
Observable learning outcomes
By the end of a session, students will have: identified a community problem and articulated why it matters; generated multiple solutions and selected one using team criteria; incorporated a specified business concept — a revenue model, customer segment, or operating constraint — into a venture design; adapted a plan in response to an unexpected disruption; delivered a structured 1–3 minute pitch covering problem, solution, fit, and pivot; and reflected on their own decision-making using guided prompts.
Every outcome above is directly observable during play. You can assess without collecting anything — or use the artifacts described under Assessment.
Where it fits your curriculum
Rather than claiming alignment with specific course codes, here's what Awesomeville teaches in curriculum terms — so you can map it to your own outcomes in a few minutes.
Entrepreneurship and business courses
The game runs the core arc most entrepreneurship curricula share: opportunity recognition (Steps 1–2), venture concept development and business models (Step 3 and the Bylaw deck), adapting to changing conditions (Step 4), and communicating a venture concept persuasively (Steps 5–6). If your course covers ideation, business fundamentals, or pitching, there's a step that maps to it directly.
Career and employability education
Every session exercises the transferable skills these programs assess: communication, collaboration, creative problem solving, adaptability, and working within constraints — all observable during play rather than reported after it.
Cross-curricular
The Opportunity deck's themes — clean water, food access, energy, inclusion, waste — connect naturally to social studies, sustainability, and citizenship education, and the pitch step doubles as oral-communication practice for language arts.
Assessment
A session generates three natural assessment artifacts: the Business Blueprint worksheet (individual or team, collected), the pitch (assessed live), and the Aha! reflection (exit-ticket style).
Pitch rubric (included in the Educator Pack) — four dimensions, each on a 4-point scale:
Problem clarity — is the town's need specific and real? · Solution fit — does the business genuinely suit this town's quirks and Bylaw? · Adaptation — how thoughtfully did the team absorb the Wildcard? · Communication — structure, clarity, and team participation. Use it summatively, or hand it to student judges for peer assessment.
Session timelines
Pitch time scales with team count — it's the number to plan around. Budget pitches first and build backwards.
| Session | Max teams | Build phases | Pitches | Reflect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45 min | 4 | ~28 min | 90 sec each (~8 min) | 4 min (lightning) |
| 60 min | 6 | ~35 min | 2 min each (~14 min) | 6 min |
| 90 min | 9 | ~53 min | 2–3 min each (~24 min) | 8 min |
| 2–3 hours | 9 | 75+ min | 3 min + Q&A | 15+ min |
A full class of 9 teams needs 90 minutes — or two shorter periods, which many teachers prefer: a build day and a pitch day.
Class size and materials
One pack supports up to 9 teams of 3–5 — a full classroom of 27–45 students. For larger groups or multiple sections running simultaneously, a second pack covers you. Cards are the only material; students need a pen and the printable Business Blueprint worksheet.
Accessibility and inclusion
Awesomeville is published by AccessAbility Employment, and inclusion is built in rather than bolted on. There's no reading race — teams read together, and reading cards aloud is an encouraged facilitation style, not a workaround. There are no devices or accounts. There are multiple ways to contribute: talkers, sketchers, builders, and quiet strategists all have real roles. And the fictional-town framing deliberately lowers the social cost of being wrong — students who never volunteer answers will pitch imaginary businesses, because nothing in Awesomeville can be incorrect. A practitioner-focused edition for employment and inclusion programs is also available.
What facilitation requires
First session: about 15 minutes — read the four-page rulebook and skim the deck. After that, zero prep. The Facilitator's Guide covers timing, tricky card combinations, small-group adjustments, and reflection prompts, and the Educator Pack includes ready-made facilitation slides for in-person and virtual sessions.
See it before you buy it
The fastest way to evaluate Awesomeville is to play it. The two-minute demo runs right in your browser — real cards, the full flow, nothing to install and no account to create. Try it yourself, or put it on the projector and run it with your class.
Try the two-minute demoQuestions about fit for your program? Email hello@awesomeville.ca — it goes to a human and nowhere else.